Researching Question

Depends on what you need during the course of the game. I would venture to say if you stuck to only one branch the research at a time, you would get in trouble. For instance, I hardly ever reach the end of any weapon tree. Theres no need to waste time researching black hole weapons when earlier techs will do the trick.
Oftentimes I will bounce around to "round out" my civ. Little bit of economics, trade, miniturization, logistics, soil enhancement, whatever.
If you continue to research ALL the diplomatic techs to get to the end of the tree while the Korath are destroying your ships because you are waaaay behind in the military, you will end dead, but you'll do it awfully diplomatic and gracefully...

It isn't really an argument for taking one tree all the way to the end if you need to be developing something else, BUT excess tp's left from the last project are rolled forward to the next project IN THE SAME TECH TREE; so it is slightly more efficient in terms of tp's to stay in the same tree until you need to work on something else.

I usually choose the cheapest currently available line of research WHICH PROVIDES A BENEFIT I can use now or soon.

drrider

While sticking to one tree is clearly not a good strategy, staying with it for a couple of techs can be. Often I find that I might as well get, for example, a few weapon upgrades in one go and be able to use that benefit rather than doing it in dribs and drabs and not actually being able to do anything with that slightly smaller gun.

It really depends a lot on what you want to achieve at any given time. Obviously that largely depends on the game situation, but you can also have fun with a kind of "grand strategy" decided before the game which will tend to lean towards a particular area of expertise.... you might decide to play heavily focused on starbases, therefore researching ahead in this area will give you the leverage in the game to actually use those bases accordingly. Or on the other hand, you might have an already specialised race and you need to improve upon the skills they are lacking.

Choosing your techs is equally part of the strategy as any other element of the game..... but I also admit to finding those "1 turn" techs difficult to resist for long!!

I find that researching Research techs very early works to my advantage.
After all, the faster you can research, the faster you can pull ahead.

Balance it with economy though, or you will go broke very fast.

It is best to get ahead tech-wise early - during the colonization phase. Less planets, but higher research and econ can make a game.

Those roll over tp's are not lost even if you're returning to beam weapons after researching toxic world colonization to grab that ripe PQ26 planet. Each branch remembers it's own roll over tp's.

This is the case with the latest version of DA.